Understanding
by Ariali
Summary: Because not every mutant can be found and taken in by the institute. OC centric
1. Part I

_A.N. I've decided that 11k words don't really need 22 chapters to contain them, so I've reorganized the story so that everything is grouped together differently. This contains no new material, it's just reformatted. I'm not dead, I've just... moved on? May be updated later, I have no idea. For those of you who never read the original version, don't bother looking at it. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men, I don't own any characters you recognize, I don't own the 100 theme challenge this was inspired by (I'd give credit where it was due, but I forgot who had it on their profile originally). If you want to sue me... you're an idiot._

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><p><em>1. Introduction <em>

They never talk about a mutant's point of view on the news, have you ever noticed? Its always "dangerous", "uncontrolled", and "should be registered", never "fear of discrimination", "in danger from violent anti-mutant groups", or "normal life gone over night".

But then again, what kind of mutant _wants_ to let the entire world know about their life? In my point of view, it would be extremely useless, because life as a mutant is something _no one_ can understand, and even other mutants don't have to face the daily challenges that come with a unique power.

It would also be extremely stupid. Why tell a hostile and violent world exactly who you are and what you are capable of? Yes, I know that not everyone is like that; not everyone reacts in fear. But for most people, it doesn't take everyone in the world to kill you. Just one person with a gun.

Why take the risk?

Why would anyone confess to being a mutant long enough for someone to understand what it's like to be one?

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><p><em>2. Love<em>

Ah, young love—or should I say infatuation? So easily found and even more easily broken.

It's funny how things work when your best friend and recent boyfriend finds out you're a mutant. I was expecting him to be a little put out, maybe mad at me for not telling him sooner, even though I had only found out a month ago myself. He might think I was joking, I though, even though April Fool's Day was last month. I didn't really think it would change our friendship; I had known him since I was eight years old after all.

I was not expecting him to panic, call the police, and start yelling at me to "stay away from me, you disgusting freak". So much for six years of friendship.

After that, things went to hell in a hand basket. See, I hadn't told my parents yet, so when they overheard him yelling about their mutant daughter, they… reacted. Looking back, I know they were just acting in surprise and ignorance when they told me to "get out and never come back. We don't have a daughter anymore". So much for loving me no matter what.

At the time, it was a life-changing betrayal.

It wasn't _my _fault I'd gotten the gene that let me make things appear and reappear in another place. _It wasn't my fault_. I hadn't done anything, had hardly even used my power once I knew I had it.

Of course, that didn't stop them from kicking me out onto the street with nowhere to go, and only the clothes on my back and a few dollars in my pocket.

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><p><em>3. Light<em>

A police car soon arrived, lights flashing and leaving bright spots in my eyes, sirens glaring at full volume. I was relieved, until they started pointing weapons at me.

Apparently, being a mutant is a crime you can be arrested for. Who knew?

Before I had thought the police were people you could trust, just like I had been told since I was young enough to understand. If you ever get lost, my mom had said often, Don't come looking for me, you'll just get even more lost. Find a police officer, or someone else responsible, like a store employee, and tell them you can't find your mother.

So who can you go to if the police aren't on your side?

I took one look at them and ran, away from the suspicion, the hostility, the threatening weapons, the deafening sirens. I'd like to say I ran and never looked back, but I did, just one glance.

There were my parents and my boyfriend, standing together in the little puddle of light cast by a lantern on the porch, united by their hate of mutants. United by their hatred of me.

I fled from everything I had ever known, away from the light.

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><p><em>4. Dark<em>

I was expecting to be chased—after all I was a "dangerous mutant"—and I was not disappointed.

I was, however, disappointed at how easy it was to keep ahead of the police man. Didn't they specifically train these people to catch criminals? Of course, the neighborhood had been my home for the last ten years, and I knew it and its shortcuts like the back of my hand, but still.

The familiar streets looked different at night, only lit up by the occasional street lamp and homes with lights on.

I had always been told to stay off the streets at night. "It's dangerous," my parents had said, "bad things come out with the dark."

It was almost funny how right they had been; I told my ex-boyfriend I was a mutant just as the stars were coming out, and he and my parents had transformed from loving, caring, supporting people, to people who wouldn't care if I lived or died, and would actually prefer the latter.

So, I stole the cop's gun. There were dangerous things out at night, and my mutation wouldn't do much good if I was cornered and in trouble. Theft, however, was a piece of cake.

After all, it's hard to stop me when the thing I'm after disappears from wherever it was and reappears right in my hand.

The police man who was following me gave up really quickly after he lost his weapon, and I slowed to a walking speed as I traveled on to who knew where.

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><p><em>5. Past<em>

It was an hour and a half later when I finally got to my friend's house. She lived in a whole different neighborhood on the other side of town, and I was exhausted by the time I arrived, but I knew her parents were pro-mutant and would let me stay the night at least.

Of course, the fact that I hadn't seen her for over a year since she switched schools made me a bit nervous to knock on the door, but on the bright side, my parents wouldn't check for me here.

I hoped.

The door opened to let me in. Her parents were as nice as I remembered, and said of course I could spend the night there, the next several nights if I had to. I didn't want to have to.

It was painful, seeing my once best friend again. She had hardly changed, and I couldn't forget how different I was compared to last time I had seen her. I didn't even look the same; my hair was different, my clothes were different, _I_ was different.

There were so many questions she asked me once she found out I was a mutant. What could I do? How long had I been one? How did I find out? How did I hide it?

The day I found my mutation will always be a day I never forget. Thankfully, it was the weekend and neither of my parents was home. I was writing a report for school and my pencil broke. I could have sworn the sharpener was downstairs last time I checked, but when I looked around it was sitting on my desk as if it had always been there.

It took a series of weird coincidences after that with things appearing as I called them for me to actually accept that I was the one making this happen. Once I acknowledged that fact, I was seriously freaked out.

The internet can tell a person a lot of things, but somehow doesn't hold the answer on what to do if you wake up one morning able to move things without touching them.

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><p><em>6. Break Away<em>

As much as I was thankful for a place to stay for a while, I didn't want to live the rest of my life freeloading from the parents of my once best friend. I figured I had to find some way to make money, but what kind of store hires a mutant? Most of the ones I passed had "no mutants" signs on the windows, which confused me. How did everyone know if I was a mutant or not?

I spent most of the next day having fun and messing around with my mutation, trying to forget that my life was in shambles. I hadn't practiced moving things before; I had known my parents didn't like unnatural things and had subconsciously felt they'd be disappointed in me for using my power, I guess. It didn't really feel right being able to move things I wasn't even touching. This power could be so easily abused and used to break the law. Now, though, it was a bit too late to worry about being arrested—they were already after me and I hadn't done anything yet—or making my parents proud—they started hating me for being a mutant the moment they found out—so I experimented.

Things didn't have teleport instantaneously, and I didn't have to see where they were to make them move. I could get a glass of water from the kitchen and it just wouldn't exist for five minutes until I called it back.

Basically, with my power I was the perfect thief and/or storage container.

Just imagine. Pick pocketing was easy as thought, because that's literally what it took to get someone's wallet.

Robbing a store? I had it covered, things disappeared off the shelves and stayed in stasis—I never actually figured out where they went before I put them somewhere else, but I kept a clock once for 15 minutes and not a second had passed according to it—and came back to reality once I was back at the house.

It was like having an invisible, weightless backpack that could never be filled. I could store so much stuff in it, the potential was endless.

And, so, that day an idea was born. So what, no store would hire me, but there were other ways to make money.

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><p>7. Heaven<p>

Theft was a new idea to me at the time. My only prior experience was shoplifting a piece of candy, and that happened when I was six and hadn't figured out yet that it was wrong to take things without paying for them. Other than that, my mind seemed to equate stealing and Robin Hood.

Rob the rich and feed the poor wasn't really what I had in mind the first time I tried it. I ended up walking into a store and right back out without taking anything. I was nervous, ok? I knew there was no way I could get caught. I knew this was the only way I could survive in the world. But still…

"Easier said than done" was definitely a saying that applied in my case.

After I finally got up the guts to do it the first time—I swiped a sweatshirt, some food, and $20 from the cash register as the store employee was distracted—the second time wasn't a problem.

Some things really did get easier with practice; the butterflies in my stomach calmed down and my hands stopped sweating. I didn't get that pang of fear every time another person noticed me either. It got to a point where I could walk into a gas station and buy a drink and a pack of gum, carry out a conversation with the cashier, and walk out the store without my heart rate rising, leaving the owner to discover their missing stock half a week later when someone took inventory.

I moved out of my friend's house half a week after my parents kicked me out. In four days I went from penniless, to in possession of enough food, clothing, and to easily survive for several months on my own. I rented an apartment in on the worse side of town—I was only 15 and no one else would let someone obviously underage stay—and only slept there at night, spending most of the day at the mall or down town. As the months passed, I became an expert at dodging cops on the lookout for truant students. I didn't even bother avoiding mall security since even if I was searched, I had nothing suspicious on me.

I was living in teenager heaven, no parents, no rules, no one to tell me what to do, and almost everything I could ever want at my fingertips.

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><p><em>8. Innocence<em>

I should have guessed that with all the things that went missing, they would have increased the security in stores. I had to be careful about where and when I used recognizable things I had appropriated from certain stores. The updated carefulness didn't even come close to catching me, though, since most of what I took was either money, or basic things like milk and cereal, so my life hardly changed.

Others, however, were not as successful in hiding their ventures.

Several times while roaming the mall, I caught sight of shoplifters or pickpockets being hauled off by a security guard. Maybe I felt sorry for them, but most were probably spoiled kids just trying to avoid using up their allowance too soon. One or two looked like they actually needed the things they were caught with, though. I tried to do what I could to help them get out of trouble, usually by putting the things they took back on the shelves without anyone noticing, and then asking the security guard what the person had done.

It was almost funny how the cops reacted when nothing was missing and the evidence was nonexistent. In one case, the employee of the store that had almost been robbed actually apologized to the thief, and the security guard, and to me. I barely managed not to laugh when that happened; the store manager himself gave the kid a gift card and promised it would never happen again.

All three times something like that happened, the kid—or adult in one case—got off home free and slightly confused. _They_ knew they had taken something, but every time they checked their bag, or pocket, or purse, there was nothing there and the thing taken was back where it should have been, nicely folded and looking untouched.

The fourth time I decided to help someone out was the time everything changed.

The thief looked like one of those normal kids with rich parents, but there was something about her that made me step in when she was caught. She looked like she was dressed for winter temperatures and her clothes looked a little too dirty for the mall. That, plus the way she flinched away from the guard and anyone who came near her made me want to intervene.

If she stood out from across the hall, the scene was even more unusual from up close.

I was right, I noticed, the girl _was _too grubby to fit in here; her clothes looked slept-in, and the brown hair obviously hadn't seen a brush in over a day. It was easily 80° inside and she had to be baking in long sleeves, gloves, and a scarf around her neck. Also, there was a crowd forming around store entrance where she was, larger than usual for petty theft.

Mystery solved when the security guard grabbed her wrist and collapsed; stealing earned a night in jail, a fine, and a phone call to your parents if you still had them. Mutation paid in one way tickets to maximum security testing facilities.

I could get rid of evidence of stealing, but when the proof is in the DNA, there's no way to fake innocence.

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><p><em>9. Drive<em>

At that time I was faced with a dilemma. She was a mutant, like me, but no one knew that I could do anything special. Should I leave her to her fate and let them drag her off to who knows where, or do I rescue her, reveal myself, and lose what life I had made in the last few months?

I wavered, indecisive, as the guard collapsed, the crowd watched on, and another mall cop arrived and was informed of the situation. The girl was on the ground as well, clutching her head and mumbling to herself quietly. The second guard looked at his colleague, then at her, then back to his fallen friend. After a moment of deliberation, he opted for crowd control and yelled for someone to call 911.

I made a decision. A multicolored cloud filled the air as the part of the hoard of smoke bombs I had stored was dropped in the middle of the mall. People panicked, some called for police, some ran, and some feared a mutant attack as the smoke just got thicker and the sprinkler system activated to make the scene complete. It was chaos; it was madness; it was a _perfect_ distraction. With a handkerchief covering my face from the smoke, I grabbed the mutant and ran to the parking lot, dragging her behind me.

Distracting a mob, dodging cops, and escaping a mall while half carrying a mutant of unknown power was easier than I had thought it would be.

She had taken my cloth mask and was currently hacking up her lungs onto the sidewalk. Add a hat and it was the perfect disguise; who looks twice at a sick person? People just aren't that nice anymore. Plus, she wasn't the only one having trouble breathing at the time. Maybe I used a few too many smoke bombs?

I steered her over to a car that flashed lights at me when I clicked the button on some stolen keys I had grabbed during the pandemonium. The poor mutant girl looked half-dead, and I think she may have been in shock, but she didn't resist when I told her to get in the passenger's side.

The police were just starting to arrive at the scene when I realized I had never driven a car before. Let's just say it was an interesting journey back to my apartment. No, I did not kill anyone. Yes, I had to temporarily vanish a few fire hydrants that I may have hit else wise. And, yes, a few pedestrians had on the go lessons on dodging cars.

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><p><em>10. Breathe<em>

After a long and interesting drive, I managed to park the car and drag her inside, thankful that I lived on the first floor. She may have been skinny, but even that weighs at least 100 lbs for her size, and I'm not exactly strong or large myself. I hadn't tried moving living things with my power, and didn't want to start with a human. At least she wasn't squirming around, though; the mutant girl had somehow lost consciousness while I was driving.

I suppose that, when waking up in a strange place after having fainted or fallen asleep under strange circumstances that included a hostile mob, copious amounts of multicolored smoke, and a helpful, but completely unknown rescuer that looked younger than you were, panic is a normal reaction. Panic is fine, I can deal with panic.

When the girl managed to hyperventilate herself into unconsciousness less than a minute after she woke up, though, I was not prepared. Next time she came to, though, I was ready with a paper bag. Which she refused to use.

Obviously she was not a very trusting girl.

Of course, I can't really blame her. She did, after all, have her mutation revealed to everyone in the mall less than an hour ago, and they didn't really react in a good way. But I didn't really want her to pass out on my couch _again_.

So I, being stupid like I was, decided to use my hands as a paper bag and covered her mouth.


	2. Part II

_A.N. I noticed while writing this that I don't actually have a name for my main character, possible choices are on my profile and the poll is open. **Please vote for a name on my profile****.** Also, this chapter gets a bit darker, but I'm not sure exactly how rating systems work, so I think it's about a T. No horribly gruesome descriptions (though there is some blood), nothing I consider mature content, and I try to avoid swearing. _

_There will be absolutely no romance or physical relationships in this story; I've never written one before. Also, my character is an OC so unless I want to make her fall in love with another OC, it would stray far too close to being a self-insert/mary sue, both of which I want to avoid. The description of what the girl looks like is purposefully vague, just imagine her however you want._

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><p><strong><em>10. Breathe<em>**

When I woke up, the girl was gone. Along with all the money I had in the apartment, a bag, some clothes, and as much food as one person could feasibly carry. There was a note:

_I know now you only wanted to help. I'm sorry. _

Of course everything could be replaced, and it wasn't like I was cleaned out, and I would have probably given her the stuff anyway, but still. The thief got robbed; there's irony to make my day.

Of course, I now had a stolen car sitting out front which complicated things.

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><p><em><strong>11. Memory<strong>_

When I looked outside, it was already dark. I must have been knocked out for several hours at least, and now the police would probably be looking for the car I had stolen. It would have been nice if I could have made the car disappear, but some things were too large to move. The first time I tried with something that big, I woke up an hour and a half later with the worst headache in my life. Needless to say, I never tried again.

All this meant I had to leave the area. Someone would have already seen the car parked in front of the building, and I didn't want to be here when they asked my fellow renters. It wasn't like they could find me in a new city. The police had nothing to use that could find me; I hadn't been fingerprinted ever, and the apartment had been rented under a fake name.

So, I put everything from my apartment into stasis, packed a small backpack with some clothes for show, and set out into the larger world. Standing under a streetlight on the sidewalk, I got a sudden feeling of déjà vu. The last time I had done something like this, my parents had disowned me a few minutes before.

Now it was completely different circumstances. I was nothing like the scared teenager with nowhere to go and nothing but the clothes on her back. I had purpose—more or less—and I had resources—enough money to buy a small house and enough stuff to fill it to the brim—and I definitely wasn't scared of the streets after dark.

I did, after all, still have the hand gun from being chased the night my life changed. And I had some fireworks. And some smoke bombs left over from the mall distraction. And maybe I had a shotgun or three, several cooking knives, pepper spray, and the ability make everything on another person—including possible weapons and clothes—disappear.

No, I was very different from the person I used to be.

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><p><em><strong>12. Insanity<strong>_

A teenage girl walking on the streets at night is just asking for trouble.

I was a teenage girl, it was night, I was walking, but when I found trouble, it wasn't looking for me. No, another teenage girl was struggling with a couple of drunks in an alley off the main street. Another _familiar_ teenage girl, wearing clothing that covered up far too much skin for the current climate.

What are the odds?

I had already saved her once, I figured, and what kind of person would I be if I ignored the mutant now? After all, I was already moving to another city because of her, and the men were drunk. One was already lying passed out on the sidewalk.

When another man fell to the ground and didn't get back up, I realized it wasn't the alcohol that knocked him unconscious. It was the girl and her fascinating power. Obviously skin based, as soon as someone touched her they were down for the count. I slipped on a light jacket and a pair of gloves before heading over.

It's amazing how someone's demeanor changes when faced with a pistol. The girl flinched farther back toward the wall she had been cornered against, a very logical reaction when someone who may not like you has a firearm pointed in your direction. She did steal my stuff after knocking me out after all.

Alcohol causes very different reactions in people. One started puking up their guts, which may not have been caused by the threat of a gun. One cowered in fear. Another just stared at me while the last did something extremely stupid. He tried to attack me.

Ok, I admit, if I had been a normal child, and unarmed, it may have worked. Of course, why would I have been out on the streets _holding a_ _gun_, if I was normal? I would be at home, sleeping in bed. But since I was not normal, his idea as it was failed. Horribly.

Drunk man comes running at girl armed with gun. Girl stares at man for a moment, wondering at man's stupidity. Gun disappears, to be replaced with pepper spray. Pepper spray to eyes + knee to crotch = unconsciousness and pain.

It was rather sad. The guy wasn't even sober, and I have doubts about his sanity.

Of course, he was in good company, I'd doubted my own common sense ever since I had thrown the first smoke bomb at the mall. I also have suspicions about the mutant I'd saved, she was talking to herself when I first saw her.

But still, I know enough not to try to attack someone with a gun.

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><p><em><strong>13. Misfortune<strong>_

So where was I? Stuck in an alley threatening a bunch of drunks with a stolen hand gun who were as of five minutes ago threatening a mutant girl who I kept running into. The drunks were threatening the girl, not the hand gun, though mutant girl seemed pretty scared of the gun as well as the drunks. Obviously not very good at common sense this one. I'd already saved her from an angry mob and some beer-filled idiots; it wasn't like I would shoot her and undo all my hard work.

Ok, so maybe I'd only found her twice, but both times she was in some kind of trouble that I had to get her out of. That girl really had bad luck. I swear, it's impossible to get in trouble as often as she had without specifically searching for it.

The aforementioned bad luck magnet had been trying to run out of the alleyway without me noticing, while mentally challenged alcoholic and I had our face off. Needless to say, her escape attempt did not succeed. No doubt, upon having possibly completed said escape, mutant girl—I shouldn't really call her that; I, too, am a mutant girl, so the name isn't really unique to her—would probably have run afoul with some other dangerous circumstance. Perhaps an escaped murderer, runaway car, or rabid dog?

However, I didn't need to worry about those things because I stopped her before she left the alley. At which point she tried to tackle me and knock me out again with her obviously skin related, sleep inducing mutation.

I had already experienced her special flavor coma once before, and didn't really want to deal with the headache again, so naturally, I resisted. She fought dirty, but I won in the end, only having to sacrifice half a handful of hair before she gave in to the mighty threatening power of my pistol. I was starting to feel attached to the fire arm. It was the first thing I had stolen with my power, and d*** useful. No one had to know that the thing wasn't currently loaded.

Trusty hand gun or not, at this point trying to help her was becoming a health risk. Life itself was out to get her, it seemed, and it was willing to go through me to get her. I was starting to wonder if the risk was worth it; and now, after nicely threatening her attackers she attacks me. Maybe she wasn't the only one with horrible luck.

And for the record, knocking her out and tying her hands together with duck tape was completely justifiable. She needed protection from herself the girl's luck was so bad. And I needed protection from everything out to get her.

She really wasn't worth the effort, but I sure wasn't just going to let her go; she was the only mutant I'd ever seen, and that was enough to make her interesting.

Besides, I owed her one for earlier.

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><p><em><strong>14. Smile<strong>_

I ended up taking the girl to a nearby hotel; I could hear the sirens from the police who had found my stolen car, and my apartment was probably being broken into as I walked into the run down building in which I planned to stay for a very short time. It really is a sad world when people don't look twice at someone dragging an unconscious teenage girl into the building, even if it was the bad side of town. The person at the front desk just stared for a second, yawned tiredly, and handed me the room keys.

The hotel was a shabby one, only three stories with cracked plaster, spiders in the corners, and clown pictures grinning creepily with wide eyes from their picture frames on the wall. The place also had no elevator, interestingly enough, and the keys I had gotten were for a room on the third floor. For the second time in 24 hour, I found myself wishing I could use my mutation on living things. That was my top priority, I promised myself. I'd get right on it as soon as my life had calmed down a little, police weren't looking for the car I stole, and stupid bad luck magnet stopped running into my life. Mutant girl who I had seen far too often lately shifted a little as I was trying to carry her, reminding me that she would eventually wake up.

Having already experienced what happened when the girl woke up after I rescued her once, I decided it would be a good idea if she and her mutation stayed away from me for the time being. She got the bed while I perched on a chair watching her breathe from the other side of the room.

It was almost dawn when something finally happened. And by "something happened", I mean she woke up. And by "she woke up", I mean she regained consciousness, but pretended to still be asleep. Let's just say the girl wouldn't be winning any prizes for acting in the near future. When a person suddenly stops breathing, tenses up, and then goes back to normal, it's kind of obvious they aren't asleep anymore.

After five minutes of staring at her while she exercised her horrible acting skills, I got bored. The pretense of sleep was disrupted by a teddy bear landing on her head. She sat up in bed, strangling the poor bear, and looked around the room wildly before her eyes finally met mine. I gave a short wave and smiled, trying not to resemble the demon clowns from the hallway.

She looked at me, obviously confused. I looked at her, wondering what to say now.

And that's when the lights went out, plunging the room into darkness.

* * *

><p><em><strong>15. Silence<strong>_

Without power to the hotel, the only light came through the window. Have you ever noticed how your other senses increase when it's very dark? Sounds especially are magnified. No matter what time of day it is, something is always making noise. The dripping of the leaky faucet was loud in the relative quiet, dog barked a few times in a nearby building, traffic could be heard in the distance, and, ever so faintly, the footsteps of a person or people sounded on the stairs leading to this level of the hotel.

A rustling noise came from the direction of the bed. I quickly picked out a flashlight towards the sound, and the light showed the girl trying to stealthily creep off the mattress. She froze like a deer in car headlights. The sound of feet in the hallway stopped outside the door and muffled whispering replaced it.

Who would be walking around a dark hotel at this time in the morning? Why did they pick the entrance to this room specifically? I tossed the light to mutant girl sitting on the bed and took out the trusty firearm, pointing it to the door. Hopefully she wouldn't try to brain me with the light while my back was turned. I focused on the hallway outside. Maybe it was nothing, just a drunk idiot. Maybe I was being overly paranoid.

Maybe incredibly bad luck that the other person in the room was deciding to make a reappearance.

The tense silence in the room was temporarily broken with a thud something hitting the door and a crack as the door protested the violent treatment. Yep, it was definitely her bad luck. Someone—probably more than one, maybe some-five or some-ten—was trying to break into the room, and I seriously doubted they wanted to help me.

Another thud, another crack. Whatever the rest of the hotel may have been like, the doors seemed to be surprisingly sturdy. I doubted it would last much longer, though.

Now, to be, or not to be? A mutant, that is. I doubted whoever was currently wielding the battering ram was after me specifically; the other girl had been much less discrete. Poor girl, she _really_ wasn't having a good past few days. I doubt they knew much about me, though.

On one hand mutant sympathizers were probably treated better than actual mutants when kidnapped and I probably wouldn't wake up tied to an operating table. On the other hand, there was the possibility that if I used my mutation I wouldn't have to worry about waking up in unfamiliar places at all. I hadn't tried it out at all in violent situations, though—idiot drunks don't count—and it wasn't exactly an offensive power. I vanished the gun.

Non-mutant but sympathizer it was then.

_Crack._ The door broke in two after a final hit and men dressed in dark clothing poured into the room. Mutant girl gave a kind of screech and dropped the flashlight, shadows danced on the walls in the unreliable light, and I felt like someone had just stabbed me with a tack as what was little light was left faded to black.

* * *

><p><em><strong>16. Questioning<strong>_

When I woke up, I was tied to a chair in one of those classic interrogation room settings. You know, white walls, metal table, mirror on one of the walls that obviously had people watching from the other side.

My plan to get captured and _not_ end up experimented on succeeded apparently; now I just had to conceal the fact that I was a mutant long enough to find a convenient time to make my escape. An escape that would be much easier when people underestimated me.

Maybe I was a mutant, but mutations weren't always extremely useful in a fight. The only nonfatal thing mine was good for was disarming people. Hopefully no one I ran into would be good at hand to hand combat while naked, although I could never be too sure. If all else failed… Well, I did specify _nonfatal_ use for a reason.

I waited in the white room for a while, staring at my reflection in the one way window and planning escape routes. The handcuffs would be easy enough to get out of, same with the door. Depending on who came in, I could most likely sit quietly until they got bored and left me alone.

I hadn't tried vanishing a wall before, but the way it worked my mutation was all or nothing—given a sheet of paper I couldn't just cut a hole in it with my power—and I'd probably end up with the whole building instead depending on how it was built. If a car was enough to knock me out and give me a headache, I didn't want to test anything larger.

A person? I didn't want to test whether that fell into the fatal side of things unless I had to.

I was just contemplating going back to sleep when the door opened and someone walked in. Obviously military from his clothing, he sat down across the table and started asking questions. My guess was right; they had been after my… friend? Could I call her that? She was more of an annoyance that kept attracting trouble.

So, anyway, back to the interrogation; hopefully if they'd been after me their information would have been much more complete—as in, it would have existed; they knew _nothing_ about me—so my plan of underestimation was working. As for the questions, I had planned to stay silent, but telling obvious lies was more fun.

Name? Jane Doe. Age? Haven't you ever heard that you're not supposed to ask that of a girl? Nationality? Martian. Place of birth? Mars, obviously.

This man had evidently had very little experience with teenage lack of respect for authority, because he got angry really fast. Then he got quiet—probably tried the good old "count to ten" idea—and threatened me.

He started out outlining everything I could be arrested for. Apparently, I was facing charges of property damage and assault from the mall, grand theft auto, more assault because of the whole drunk idiot thing, one of the drunks saw me carrying a firearm without a license, resisting arrest even though I hardly struggled even after they _broke the door down_, and, to top it all off, truancy. Apparently yesterday was a Friday and I looked young enough that I should have been at school.

So, once the threat had been put on the table he offered me a way out of trouble. I answer a few questions, they forget everything I'd done in the last few days, find my parents, or put me in a nice foster home. As if. Who actually wanted to go to a foster home? I had done fine by myself thanks but no thanks.

He didn't ask me about myself this time—I'd lied before, why should I tell the truth now?—but wanted to know all I could tell about mutant girl I'd rescued twice, or had I saved her three times now? The questions made me happy—she must have stayed quiet about herself if they were asking me these things—and worried for her safety—she was an uncooperative mutant and people didn't like those.

I didn't even jokingly answer those questions, just sat there staring at him until he pulled out a gun.

Yep, I was definitely worried for her safety.

* * *

><p>17. Threat<p>

Tell me, what do you do when someone threatens you with a gun?

Panic. Then take a deep breath, calm down, and steal the ammunition from out of the weapon.

After having rendered the threat harmless, I kept quiet. Inwardly, I was extremely anxious to find out if he'd brought the thing out only to scare me, or if he'd actually end up trying to kill me. What the heck was this place if people go around pointing guns at normal—well, I could kind of pass for normal if you squinted and didn't know me really well—teenagers and threatened to shoot them.

Maybe he was bluffing, but maybe he wasn't. Either way, this person was crazy, dangerous and doing something illegal. I was an American citizen, and every American citizen had the right to remain silent as seen on TV. Every American citizen also had the right not to get shot while using that right. There was probably something about a right to not get arrested for no good reason in some legal document in Washington, but I doubted the person sitting across from me with a gun pointing at my head cared.

Sane people don't tie teenage girls up, lock them in white rooms, and threaten to kill them.

Even if the weapon was no longer loaded and technically therefore I wasn't in immediate danger, the principle of the matter was still there. When a pistol is aimed in your direction, you act scared.

Acting scared didn't mean that I answered his questions though.

The man got angrier and angrier and started yelling at me to answer the questions. He was furious that I wouldn't tell them anything true. Suddenly, his voice became very quiet. He gripped the gun in both hands, flipped off the safety, and kept the barrel pointed my direction. I had until the count of three to start talking, he said.

One. I just watched him. These people were dangerous if they were willing to kill a mostly innocent teenager in cold blood. And if they would do that, what else would the do to achieve their goals? I definitely needed to step up my escape plans, and while I was at it, finding and helping anyone else trapped here was probably a good idea.

Two. The finger on the trigger tensed. He blinked, and shifted his grip on the gun, aiming it between my eyes. How many times had he done this before? I looked at the mirror behind him, saw myself in it. The white wall behind me framed my face. How much longer would the walls stay clean?

Three. The man wasn't bluffing. I was getting out of here now.

Click.

He didn't really think I was just a normal person, did they?

The world changes after someone tries to kill you. People aren't intrinsically good anymore. And, maybe, some of them shouldn't stay alive.

I tilted my head and smiled at him as he stared in bewilderedly at the gun. He looked at me suddenly, suspicious. The gun disappeared from his hand, and reappeared in mine, no longer bound to the chair, fully loaded and pointed at him.

Tell me, what do you do when someone threatens you with a gun?

* * *

><p><em><strong>18. Blood<strong>_

We stared at each other. I wondered when the people on the other side of the mirror would come running in the door, ready to pull me away, lock me up, and sedate and experiment on me. After all, that's what you did with mutants, right?

The door banged open briefly to admit a figure, but somehow I never pictured the person who would come in to be so… _hairy_. This was supposed to be a secret mutant base. I may not have known much about the military, but short-back-and-no-sides was a phrase I had heard associated with army hair cuts. Also, last time I checked, uniforms did exist—the questioner was wearing one—and they did not include animal fur.

So either secret mutant experimentation facilities had different standers, or this guy wasn't working for them.

Since the man sitting across from the table from me looked just as confused as I was feeling, I was guessing it was the second option.

Either way, the gun barrel had found a new target until I figured out who he was. My sweaty hands readjusted their grip on the weapon.

_Bang._

Somehow in those few milliseconds between the bullet leaving the barrel and hitting the guy's head I managed to vanish the bullet in midair. That very was close.

Sadly, Hair Man did not see it as an accidental shooting, and took my pulling the trigger as a sign that I wanted to kill him. So he tried to kill me.

The other man ducked under the interrogation table while Hair Man leapt over it to try to get to me. I screeched—what would you do?—and ducked, trying to dodge, and the bullet reappeared.

One thing I had learned early on with my power, things kept their inertia while they were under the influence of my power. For instance, if I dropped a tennis ball and moved it while it was still falling, it would keep going down at the same speed it had been. If I moved a bullet, well. You can imagine.

The previously spotless walls weren't white anymore; head wounds—especially _fatal _head wounds bleed a lot.

Hair Man was draped over the table mid-leap, while the other guy was huddled under it. Red liquid dripped down onto the floor. Some of the spatters had hit the walls, the mirror, the liquid on the floor was in puddles. Dead, definitely dead. Last time I checked most people couldn't survive with a hole in their forehead. Or with most of their blood pooling on the ground.

He was dead. And I had killed him.

So much for my plan to escape quietly.

* * *

><p><em><strong>19. Decisions<strong>_

I stepped out of the door of the interrogation room into chaos. Obviously whoever had made the walls soundproof had done an excellent job in order for me not to have heard what was happening in the hall outside. Sirens were blaring earsplitting warnings. Evacuate. Why?

A rumbling shudder ran through the floor answering my question. No one wanted to be inside if the building fell to pieces. Wait. An earthquake? In Kansas? Maybe I wasn't a seismologist—I had yet to finish high school—but something told me that the ground in the Midwest wasn't supposed to shake.

So, either I wasn't in Kansas anymore and had been knocked out longer than I thought (unlikely but possible; they had stolen my watch), whoever built this place was an idiot that designed buildings that spontaneously collapsed (very unlikely), or something was causing the earthquake that wasn't really an earthquake.

Whatever was happening, staying inside didn't seem very safe.

You know those green exit signs that most public buildings have to show people how to get out? Turns out top secret experimentation facilities don't have those. And sneaking around when a bunch of soldiers run through the halls every fifteen seconds is not as easy as it sounds. However, assuming the soldiers were evacuating, they did unintentionally provide directions to the outside.

But no, my life isn't that simple; after a few minutes following, I could tell that the soldiers weren't headed outside, but farther into the building.

So… get lost trying to find the way out and have the place collapse, or follow the nice people as the go to somewhere obviously important? Decisions, decisions.

Easy to make decisions, but decisions none the less.

I followed them down three flights of stairs through multiple hallways and past closed doors too numerous to count. Wherever we were, the shaking wasn't as bad, so hopefully I was safe from death by entombment under hundreds of tons of building.

Suddenly, the group stopped in front of a door. I quickly ducked into a conveniently placed alcove just out of sight and peeked around the corner. Lots of hand signals were exchanged, most of which I did not understand.

My confusion was cleared up when people started pointing guns in my direction for the second time in the last hour. What do you do when multiple people, most likely well trained in hand to hand combat aim their weapons at you?

Decisions, decisions. I froze. They fired.

The world stood still for a split second. A funny thing about my power is that things don't always loose the kinetic energy while being transported. Maybe only one in ten keeps going at the same rate it started out at, but I had been shot at a lot in the last few days. In simple terms: bang, bullet disappears from gun barrel and reappears—still going the same speed—behind the person's skull.

* * *

><p><em><strong>20. Look <strong>_

The dead bodies were staring at me as I stared back. In the movies, someone—usually a relative or best friend—always closes the person's eyes, but this wasn't the movies. I wasn't an actor, no one would suddenly say "cut!" while the people lying on the floor magically returned to life, sprung up onto their feet, and wiped the ketchup off of their faces.

This was real life, and the lifeless eyes were still open and looking at me.

I should be sad. I should be feeling guilty about what I did and not sleep well for weeks. I should at least have the decency not to steal a bullet proof vest off one of the smaller and less bloody bodies.

But I needed it. When I vanished bullets, it was more like a wall where anything that touched it disappeared; I wasn't the kind of mutant that was fast enough to pick out individual pellets going faster than the eye could see. I could be shot, and bleed, and die. Just like the soldiers who were staring at me from the ground.

Only with me, no one would care—except the person whose floor I just got red liquid all over, that is.

I really should feel sorry. Shouldn't I?

But everyone had to die sometime, and in a choice between me and them, I chose me.

The walkie-talkie one of the dead men had started crackling and spitting out static with a few words interspersed between the white noise. Mutant, metal, evacuate, eliminate, test subject, aaaaarrrrrrrggghhhhh. That last one was a kind of gurgling croak. I can only guess what happened on the other end. Pieced together—minus the groan—a metal mutant was evacuating and eliminating the test subject. Or they were supposed to eliminate the mutant and the test subject while evacuating the metal. Or evacuate while the metal test subject eliminated the mutant.

Or I should just leave and hope everyone left me alone after this, but I wanted to see what was behind the door.

Door? What door? Door number one, of course. The metal plated entrance to an unknown room or hallway that the soldiers had stopped in front of before trying to shoot me. It looked interesting, and I didn't feel like trying to find the metal mutant test subject who was eliminating the evacuators.

I grabbed the walkie-talkie and stepped between—never step on one, it's disrespectful, even if they were looking at you weirdly—the bodies to get to the door, which opened before I could reach for the handle.


	3. Part III

_**21. Heavy**_

The mysterious steel door opened. And by opened I mean was blasted open towards me at dangerously fast speeds. What was it with speedy objects flying toward head? Following the pattern that I hope didn't continue, the door disappeared, _before_ my head was damaged. It would make a good battering ram later if needed. Or a shield. Or just a cool display of my power. And I said "let there be a door!" and there was a door.

Currently, though, there was no door, for if there had been a door, it would have had an intimate introduction to my head, and for some reason that didn't seem like a good idea.

My thoughts were interrupted by a man flying through the now open doorway. Being distracted, I didn't quite manage to duck this time, and so was knocked over on to my back with an unconscious, uniformed man laying on top of me. Thankfully I managed to avoid landing on one of the dead bodies scattered along the floor, but even so, the back of my shirt became smeared with blood and the guy snoring on top of me was heavy. _Very _heavy, fifteen year old girls are not known for lifting weights. And on top of having the air crushed out of my lungs, what little oxygen I managed to inhale smelt like smoke, suggesting he'd had recently gone camping and hadn't changed clothes, or had a close encounter with explosives. Somehow I doubted it was the first.

So, to vanish or not to vanish? I still had no idea what happened to living things, but hey, I'd already killed people today and it wasn't certain that he'd die. Besides, I wanted him off; laying on the floor in a pool of blood was not sanitary, and there were interesting noises coming from the doorway he'd flown through, adding weight to my nearby explosives theory.

Decision made, he was on the floor next to me in an instant. I sat up and checked his pulse. Nothing; yet another name to add to my list of fatalities. Darn, and it would have been so useful to not have to carry around unconscious people by hand. Wait… since when do I know how to check someone's pulse? I tried putting my finger on a different part of his neck, like they did on TV. _Thump, thump, thump._ I really am an idiot sometimes.

So, non-lethal power. That's good; no more heavy lifting.

* * *

><p><strong><em>22. FMO - Flying Metal Object<em>**

Looking through the door I saw it opened into a largish room that looked like a warzone. Smoke filled air, check. Military personnel running around firing guns, check. Injured people lying on the floor moaning, guys with uniforms yelling at other guys who were also wearing uniforms, check and check. Who the heck were they fighting, though?

Also, I may not be an expert on warfare, but are there supposed to be chunks of metal flying through the air?

Just then, a grenade landed at my feet. Despite all the movies I had watched, I had no idea how to tell if the pin of the grenade was still there, or whether I was about to face death by explosives. Either way, that wasn't a chance I wanted to take. The grenade disappeared, like most life threatening objects—recently including but not limited to: bullets, guns, flying doors, and overweight men—did when I wanted them to.

The lack of an explosion from a hand grenade is actually _not_ a subtle event, whatever one might think. Obviously the grenade—which was now in stasis and out of the influence of time—was supposed to explode, and when it didn't, the idiot who threw it got a bit suspicious. Thankfully he got brained in the back of the head with a flying metal bar—there were a lot of things flying around in the air at high velocity. It was actually rather strange—before he could come to investigate the lack of boom.

I rather quickly decided that although I may be insanely curious, any inquisitiveness has limits, and suicide by walking through a war was not something on my to-do list. Just before turning to go back through the door, however, who did I see but mutant girl with sleep inducing skin.

Right in the middle of everything, wearing a prison issue straight jacket, and walking like she had a few too many bottles of rum. And to top it all off, she was about to receive a concussion and/or broken skull via an airborne piece of steel that looked _uncannily_ like the one which had already come into close contact with the grenade throwing jerk.

Third—or was it more like fifth?—time's the charm when it comes to rescuing a complete stranger. Maybe. But at least I now knew my power wasn't lethal, which made everything easier.

The familiar projectile whizzed through the empty space between where her ears used to be as she vanished.

And let me tell you, if the lack of an explosion is conspicuous, a girl disappearing from the center of a battlefield is even less subtle.

* * *

><p><em>And that's all I have so far...<em>

_More to come?_


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